Category: Home Selling

1. Just because someone declares the market hot, doesn’t mean it is. I’d call it “tepid.”

2. It’s not a seller’s market. It’s probably never a seller’s market.

3. Many weenies walk this world. And most of them are looking for a house in your area. They’re mean and snide and they’ll write intentionally cruel feedback on things you can’t possibly control on your Showing Time app because 1) they can and 2) they’re weenies.

4. There is nothing satisying in Weeniedom. The thing to watch out for is you need to resist becoming a weenie yourself, because believe me, on certain bad days, you will want to join them. You’ll just be stuck with yourself at the end of the day, being a weenie. It doesn’t feel good. Trust me.

5. Stuff you think will impress a buyer, won’t. You just can’t impress them. Professional stagers might stuff your closet full of high-end shopping bags. I didn’t do this, but I hung my prettier clothes at the front of my closet. (Hey! I live in podunk but I have a few Lilly Pulitzer dresses, which makes me classy, or at least capable of affording a vacation sometimes.) The message: “I live here because I choose to.” They won’t get that. It will read you’re desperate and something must be very wrong with your house.

6. Don’t worry too much about your furniture or decor. They won’t read “antiques.” They’ll just think your house looks beat up. And somehow they’ll expand this in their minds to include the freshly painted walls and the house itself. So much rests on a lowly coffee table.

7. You can’t control triggers. For all you know, the framed “Goodnight Moon” print in a child’s bedroom could be a trigger. (They’d better be glad we put away the “In the Night Kitchen” print, with that naked little boy floating around.)

8. Even a glimpse of your strawberry blonde ponytail as you fly away from the house, dragging along your little diapered Maltese on its tiny feet while so you can go hide on the neighbors’ porch, could be a trigger. If you’ve spent a great deal of your life as a redhead, as I have, then you know redheads are capable of doing very bad things that can cause deep trauma to others, especially romantically. People will never forget it. You could well be the trigger yourself. Just be aware.

9. Things you think are innocuous can cause deep revulsion or offense in another. That hint of rust on your shower head, for example. There is absolutely nothing you can do about this. It might read that you’re behind on your home maintenance, though, and friend, there is no recovering from this.

10. Someone can profess to love your house more than life itself, and claim they’ve been looking for it all their lives. This can mean just about anything. Yeah, it could mean an offer; but it’s just as likely to mean they’ve just taken ecstasy. Or they have the integrity or life experience of your first significant other who told you the same thing and look how that worked out.

11. Just following on the previous idea and its likely outcome, as cute as you (or your house) may be, you’re probably not cuter than the next . And they’re going to forget you anyway. The next one is new. You cannot compete. It takes a deep love and instant attachment for the kind of follow-through that leads to a contract around here.

12. 27 showings in 17 days is a lot of showings. It doesn’t mean you’re going to get an offer right now. It means you have insanely good pictures on your listing and people really want to live around here. You have curb appeal. Or maybe you just have a house. It’s not a numbers game, though. You still just need that one who are willing to look past the rust, your desperate closet, your beat-up furniture, and your hair color.